The invention relates to a method for connecting a cable, which is to be inserted into a cable receptacle of a housing, to a printed circuit board supported by the housing by means of a conductor which is led transverse to the direction of the main extent of the cable from the cable receptacle through the printed circuit board and is soldered to the printed circuit board on the top side thereof. Furthermore, the subject matter of the invention is a housing for holding a printed circuit board, which is provided with a cable receptacle in which a cable having a cable strand is inserted, and which has been connected to the printed circuit board by means of a conductor according to the method in accordance with at least one of the preceding claims.
At present, cables are connected to a printed circuit board by initially connecting the cable end to a soldering pin which penetrates the printed circuit board with a conductor and is soldered to the printed circuit board on the top side thereof. This cable with the soldering pin is inserted into the injection mold for the injection molding of the housing, with the result that the soldering pin is injection-coated with the cable when the housing is produced.
This type of connection of a cable to a printed circuit board requires a soldering pin as a component connecting the cable to the printed circuit board. Since the cable must be positioned with the soldering pin in an injection mold, there is a relatively high outlay on producing the electric connection between the cable and the printed circuit board.
The invention is based on the problem of configuring a method of the type mentioned at the beginning in such a way that a housing can be provided with a cable connecting a printed circuit board with as little outlay as possible. The aim is also to create a housing with such a cable which is particularly suitable for carrying out this method.
The first-named problem is solved according to the invention by virtue of the fact that the conductor is produced by bending over an end region of the cable strand transverse to the direction of the main extent of the cable.
Such a mode of procedure saves one component, specifically the soldering pin to be injection molded into the housing. In accordance with the invention, this soldering pin is produced by bending over the end region of the cable strand. This bending over of the end region of the cable strand requires substantially less outlay than soldering the soldering pin onto the cable strand, with the result overall that not only are the costs lowered by economizing on a component, but the outlay on production is also further reduced.
The required bending-over of the cable strand can be performed positively when mounting the cable, with the result that no additional work operation is required when, in accordance with a development of the method, the cable strand is bent over by pushing the cable transverse to its main extent into a cable receptacle which is open toward the side of the printed circuit board.
The second-named problem, specifically the creation of a housing, provided with a cable, for holding a printed circuit board, is solved according to the invention by virtue of the fact that the cable receptacle is guided into the housing starting from the side of the printed circuit board, and the conductor leading to the printed circuit board is formed by bending over the front end of the cable strand. It is possible with the aid of such a housing to produce a component with a printed circuit board in a very cost-effective fashion, because the cable for the component can be mounted and connected to the printed circuit board in a particularly simple way.
Tensile forces on the cable do not have the effect that the cable comes out of the cable receptacle and the connection between the cable strand and the printed circuit board is destroyed, if the cable receptacle has on at least one side a rib which constricts its cross section and owing to which the remaining cross section is smaller than corresponds to the outside diameter of the cable, and which ends at a spacing from the base surface of the cable receptacle which is greater than the radius of the cable but smaller than its diameter. Since the rib does not reach up to the base of the cable receptacle, it simultaneously prevents the cable from being able to come out of the cable receptacle toward the side of the printed circuit board.
The cable is held in a particularly effective way in the cable receptacle when, in accordance with another development of the invention, ribs are provided on both opposite sides of the cable receptacle.
The cable is held very firmly in the cable receptacle without undesirably large forces being required to push it in when a total of three ribs are provided on each side.
The ribs press into the insulation of the cable and hold the cable in a self-closed fashion when the ribs have a cross section in the shape of a triangle whose vertex is directed toward the cable.